“No, Hailee, no! Of course not! Doc Amerley was there, he and the sheriff both. We brought him back but you gotta trust me on this one, Honey. I just can’t let you see him. I just can’t.” His voice cracked with just a hint of how close he could come to breaking into tears along with her.
Before even thinking about it, Tobias found himself on his knees in front of the chair, holding her hands again as she allowed unbridled tears to flow in heavy waves, her chest heaving, nose running, and face drawn into the most painful look the man had ever seen in his life. Her pain caused him to sob along with her, molding the couple together as they shared the moment.
“I know I can trust you and Richard,” she nodded. “But I need to say goodbye to my daddy,” she looked up and into his softened eyes. “Can’t you understand that? I never got to say those words to my mamma.”
“Yes, I understand that, Hailee. And you’ll get…to…say–“ He couldn’t bring himself to finish the last bit of that thought when Richard opened the curtain again and interrupted by clearing his throat and giving a small yet firm shake of his head aimed at Tobias.
There wasn’t anything to be gained by saying it out loud.
Chapter 23
Snatching some tools off of their rusted old hooks and tossing them onto the work-worn counter in his tack room, the ranch worker sniffed at his collar. A dab of sticky syrup brought the conversation at breakfast full circle and right back into his beyond-annoyed mind once again; the snarl flinching at his upper lip told the tale.
Slam! Down came the sharpening stone with such concentrated force, the other tools jumped a quarter inch off the counter.
“Ain't got the right to order me around! No sir. I aim to eat my dinner in the same chair I do every evening, that's part of my paid wages, getting a decent meal at the end of my day,” he spat in between grumbled words so audible anyone could have heard him clearly. “Instruct me to get lost, will ya? Hummfff!”
Just as he slid a set of tools back into their places, his fingers grazed the tops of some old rags he’d kept back for cleaning his hands after a messy job; he pulled a stool up under his workbench so he could sit down and begin working on the morning's project, but then Duffy once again became distracted when he overheard a group of the other ranch hands talking outside. Something about Bruce, but he couldn't quite make out all the words and bent over closer to his tack room door so the eavesdropping would come easier for him. His eyelids dropped a bit as if that action enhanced the volume of their conversation.
“Yeah, I just don’t know what we’re going to do without the Boss around here to run the place. Can’t hardly run a man’s ranch if he’s not here.”
The man standing next to him grinned and pushed the brim of his hat back a tad, reminding him of a of fact they were all aware of.
“Hailee’s not gone anywhere and she still owns the place. That gal knows her way around this ranch good as the rest of us, you know.”
“And just in case any of you haven’t caught on yet, we’ve already got a successor to the head of the ranch; it’s just a matter of time now before Tobias takes his place. If you ask me, this ranch will be safe between the two of them. There’s nothing to worry about or even talk about, if you ask me. Only thing I wanta know is, which one of you plans on helping me with firewood this morning? Tobias is pretty busy and I noticed the stack's getting low.”
Once the group decided who each of the chores belonged to for the day and they dispersed to their tasks at hand, the man inside that tack room had already balled up both fists.
Grunting an obscenity, Duffy stomped out of his room, swinging the door to point of nearly busting it off the hinges. Heading straight over to a few old empty crates stacked up next to a couple of stalls, he punched them with clenched fists, one after another until it appeared that his anger had been properly emptied. With his head leaned up against a pile of hay, Duffy looked spent – and it was no more than ten-thirty in the morning.
Letting himself down to a empty barrel that had long since been turned upside down to drain, he sat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a blood-streaked trail under unkempt hair. Noticing his hands had been damaged during that little outburst, he turned them over in the sunlight to get a better look.
“Dagnabbit,” Duffy moaned.
Rubbing his fingers together, he popped his knuckles and shook them out, loosening the joints back into place somewhat.
The scowl plastered across his face gave evidence in any man’s book that he'd become one angry individual.
P
With the last of the vegetables being rolled into the oversized stew pot, the old cook wiped his hands across the dry towel and reached for the salt crock. Without even glancing up, his head shook when he heard the table scooting across the parlor room floor. Again. This made the second time today that girl had rearranged the furniture in there.
She’d been restless ever since the talk earlier, and seeing as how she had been advised to keep her space with Duffy and the barns, what else did she have to do with her time?
Ever since she had been old enough to be outside unsupervised, it had been her practice to go outside even before breakfast and make her rounds with the animals. Now, here it was: mid-afternoon and the farthest she’d gone was the front porch of the house.
Richard heard her father's armchair being moved and wondered where it find residence this time.
A few minutes later, Hailee strolled into the kitchen in search of the broom and a warm soapy cleaning rag.
“Do you have some extra vinegar? I think the windows could use a good scrubbing inside and out as long as I'm at it there,” she mentioned as her head popped into a cabinet.
What he wanted to do was make all this sadness and turmoil go away, fix it so none of this had ever happened. But what he did instead was hand her a dust pan to go with the broom.
“Could you reach behind the rocking chair and clean those cobwebs I saw a few days ago? I didn't have a rag with me then and just now thought of it again.”
“Already got 'em,” she reported.
Richard knew he hadn’t slept all that much, but was certain Tobias had him beat. They wouldn’t be able to go on this way forever; something had to be done about the way Duffy had such a hold on the place. It had only been a couple of days, but already the feeling of disorder clouded both the workers and residents of the Red Bone Ranch. Some measure of order needed to be regained before Duffy got the notion that everyone was about to bow and cower under his temper. The last thing anyone needed was for that man to get to thinking he was going to run the Red Bone!
P
Tobias found himself planted firmly at the base of the staircase in the Johnson's home; a nervous hand ran along his chin, giving the appearance of a young man who might be contemplating something or another. Just as he began taking that first step upward, he turned his head toward a window, wincing a bit when he caught sight of the chickens still roaming around in the yard. With night falling quickly, they should have been put up by this time. Figuring he'd best go lock them up himself, he took a step back when he saw one of the other hands taking care of the chore. He nodded, proud of the way everyone had been pitching in a little extra lately.
“Mostly everyone, that is,” he mumbled under his breath.
Smoothing a palm over the cherry wood railing, he pulled it back off and took a step back from the staircase. It just wasn’t proper for a man to visit a lady in her bed chamber, but he hadn’t wanted to bring the conversation up earlier when Hailee was in the parlor; he knew she wasn’t really cleaning - she was coping.
Besides, Richard had given Tobias the permission to speak to her in her private room, taking the role of her father on himself for the time being.
Eyes pulled shut, Tobias forced himself to climb the stairs, stopping in front of her closed door. Reluctantly, he tapped at it with his knuckles and wondered if she was reading or taking a much-needed nap.
Just as he t
hought about heading back down, her voice called out, “One moment, please.”
She pulled the door toward herself, revealing the fact that she still wore the yellow dress she’d been cleaning in earlier; a smudge on the left-hand pocket from the fireplace ashes proving his thought.
“Tobias!”
“Richard said it would be alright to come on up,” he offered before she had a chance to even ask. “I’d like a chance to talk to you. Alone.”
Her hand reached over to his and he caught a whiff of her perfume; she allowed herself a partial grin for half a moment when his eyelids fell slightly at her touch. “Of course,” she agreed without so much as a second thought.
She pointed to the chair in the corner as she climbed on her bed, finding the center of the mattress and making herself comfortable by grabbing a pillow and laying it across her lap.
“I know there are matters to take care of, but I don’t even know where to begin,” she started. “Maybe later on the tears will come again, but for right now, I’m all cried out. Daddy wouldn’t want me to risk losing this ranch by behaving like a spoiled little girl, so tell me what I need to do next, Tobias, because right now, I need something to focus on.”
His roughened fingertips scanned the cover of the book he’d picked up from the seat of the chair and grinned. Alice’s Adventures Through The Looking Glass by C.S. Lewis. One of the few books he'd begun and never finished.
“Are you feeling strong enough to do this?”
“No. I’ll never be strong enough to face the loss of my own father; I don’t think you can ever be ready for something like this. But I also know there are things to be done.” She picked at the lacy edge of her petticoat and poked her toes out from under the pillow on her lap. “Tobias, what do you think will become of the ranch now?”
“Well, Honey, you’ve always been co-owner. You still own it. The men and I will do everything we can to keep her running properly. Under your direction, of course. What else do you want to know?”
“Duffy seems to be the running problem around here. Shouldn’t we do something about that?” Those blue eyes, so drained of emotion as she asked the question, caused Tobias to shift his weight in the small chair. He leaned forward, the concern in his wrinkled-up forehead emphasizing the point to Hailee when he answered her with, “Yes. We all agree he has to go, but not quite yet…just between me and you, the sheriff wants us to keep him around for a while.”
Hailee leaned her head to the side and whispered, ”Is he a wanted man?”
Tobias shook his head.
“No, Honey. I believe I can honestly say that man is wanted by nobody.”
Chapter 24
The sound of horses brought Duffy to the front window of his bunk house; he had been so involved with his own miserable thoughts, the visitors managed to get rather close to the main house before he even realized anyone was on the place. What the man saw turned his blood cold; it was the sheriff and his deputy, and judging from the way both of them dismounted and marched into the main house without even knocking, they appeared to be on a mission. They weren't searching for anyone, Duffy could tell that from the way they rode in through the entrance gates at such a fast gallop.
“Well, that can’t be good,” he mumbled. “Wonder what's got them all the way up here.”
After ten minutes passed by with no signs of anyone going in or coming out of the main house, he couldn't help but notice his coffee drinking tin was just as empty as his coffee pot.
Tapping his fingertips in a nervous rhythm against the small table, he glanced up and out his window in time to catch the sheriff and his deputy galloping away from the Red Bone, leaving a trail of dust behind.
The man grabbed his coat and shoved the tin down into his pocket, but thought twice about going inside for that coffee. Instead, he tossed the coat over the back of his chair and made his way to the window once again, parting the red checkerboard curtain. His eyes raked over sections of the barn yard and a few of the pens he could see from where he stood.
“Something's afoot on this hill and I intend to find out what,” he mumbled under his breath.
P
One of the ranch hands poked his head in through the door and hollered in to Richard, “I was told to bring these to you; where do you want them?”
The old cook craned his neck around the open pantry door to see what the fella was talking about.
“Oh, that’s right! I dang near forgot all about them,” he snapped his fingers and pointed toward the basket. Richard's hands wiped across the sudsy dish rag in his hand, dropping it down on the shelf he’d been cleaning in his pantry.
Hobbling over to the table, Richard inventoried the vegetables he'd just acquired; they needed to be eaten up, and he asked for some help in retrieving a few of them out of the old spring house a few days back, but with recent events, that request had been completely forgotten by him.
Eyeballing the turnips, Richard asked the young man if he was too busy to help him bring in a couple more baskets of food.
“No, not at all. I was in there a little earlier swiping a few apples and thought you might wanna take a look at the stones around the spring anyhow; you may want me to repair this one section before it sinks in. You feel like heading on out there now?”
Tossing one basket over to his food-fetcher and reaching back into the pantry for another basket he could use himself, Richard asked how the apples were holding up this season and a conversation about the many things a body could do with those apples followed the pair of men all the way outside and down to the spring house.
When Duffy spied the pair of them disappear through the door, he made a quick dash to the kitchen; the thought of roaming into the house when nobody was in there sent an excited shiver down his spine and his pace quickened.
Just as Duffy returned the coffee kettle back on the wood-burning stove, a startled Hailee popped in from behind the heavy paisley curtain separating the dining area and kitchen. She held a hand-woven box filled with her unmentionable under garments and instinct moved her to retract a step when she sensed they were alone in the room. An uncomfortable second or two pierced the space between them, and Hailee placed a protective hand over the top of her clothing. She felt herself begin to tremble on the inside, but Duffy never even saw her fear as a lop-sided grin began to grow across his upper lip.
“Well, hi there. You haven’t been out to the barn lately. You wouldn’t be avoiding me, now would you, Darlin’?”
Allowing himself to leisurely take in the sight far longer than Hailee felt comfortable with, she took another step backward. Her back brushed up against the curtain.
Duffy let out a little chuckle and brought the coffee to his lips. His eyes did not leave her face.
“You know, we should get to know one another a little better one of these days,” he mentioned before turning to head out the door. Halfway through the kitchen, the clacking of Duffy’s boots against the wooden flooring paused, but the man didn’t say a word before resuming his pace out the door.
She heard him whistle a tune all the way to his bunk house and felt a sick knot building a nest in her throat.
Did that really just happen, or had she imagine the whole thing?
P
Hailee sat in her father's armchair, quietly slumped into a ball of blonde hair and blue gingham. The only sound in the parlor came from the light ticking of the wind-up clock on the mantle.
She had no idea how long Tobias had been standing behind the chair when he placed a firm hand on her shoulder, but that one action sent the girl sailing from the chair and half-way across the room in a soft squeal before glancing over her shoulder to see who had placed that hand on her. Her reaction confirmed his suspicions about her mind becoming occupied with unpleasant thoughts.
“Whoah, Nellie,” Tobias held the hand out in front of himself, palm still facing the nervous girl. “You dang-near turned this teacup upside down and over your head. You wanna tell me what's going on here?”
>
She tilted her head in an attempt to sluff the incident under the rug, but he stopped her.
“None of that 'whatever-do-you-mean' look. Not gonna work this time. C'mon, Honey. Why don't you tell me what's up?”
Both of Tobias’ eyebrows tilted inward and the skin between them wrinkled a bit. “What is it, Honey? What don't you want to tell me?”
“Nothing. I thought you were…”
“You thought I was what?”
Her hands reached out for the tea, grateful to have something to hold.
“Nothing,” Hailee repeated as she reclaimed the spot in her chair. “I’m glad you’ll be taking your meals with me in the dining room so I don’t have to eat alone, but why can’t you just talk to the sheriff and ask him to take Duffy away? Wouldn’t it be easier for all of us?”
With a hand raking through his brown mop of hair, Tobias could only shake his head and blow out a breath of air.
“You know what I told you. The sheriff’s hoping the man will slip up and hang himself in a mistake,” he reminded her in gentle voice. “I promised him our full cooperation.”
Pausing, Tobias fished for a truthful answer from the young woman he loved, asking straight out, “Has that snake out there made contact with you? If that man is trying to get to you, Hailee, I want to know about it.”
Swishing the tea in soft waves around the inside of her teacup, Hailee did not want to lie to Tobias. But she also knew what would happen if the truth of Duffy’s end of the conversation a few short hours ago was made known to Tobias.
Seeing the struggle in her face, his jaws clamped tight.
When she looked up, Tobias’ cheeks were darkened with anger and she did not like what she saw behind his eyes.
Chapter 25
“If only a person could turn back the hands of time, maybe I could have prevented some of this from even happening,” Tobias stared out the parlor room window, his eyes fixated on the flower pot he’d slipped the love letter under. “All I had to do was keep my eyes open. I knew in my gut that man was trouble and I did nothing.”
Rebellion in the Valley Page 15
